Hearing loss is a serious problem affecting one's communication ability. According to statistics, about one third of senior citizens in Taiwan encounter hearing problems. Hearing problems not only result in communication difficulty, but also affect the quality of life. At worst, people having hearing impairments are unaware of surrounding dangers. Hence, hearing problem is an important healthy subject. For example, most degenerative presbycusis results from the death of inner hair cells, vascular cells or spiral ganglion cells. Furthermore, there are several factors impacting one's faculty of hearing, for example, a great deal of noise in the environment and heredity. This kind of hearing loss is called sensorineural hearing loss, which cannot be cured surgically or medically in most cases. Nowadays, hearing-impaired patients usually wear audio devices such as hearing aids capable of amplifying sounds to enhance their hearing.
Before a hearing-impaired patient buys a hearing aid from a hearing-aid company, the professional performs a series of fitting and fine-tuning procedures depending on the disorder degree to allow the hearing-impaired patient to have a suitable hearing aid. The fitting and fine-tuning procedures include the following steps.
The first step is pre-fitting evaluation and audiometry (or so-called hearing test). At first, the audiologist or dispenser/hearing aid specialist gives a hearing test after the customer gets in the hearing-aid company.
The second step is hearing-aid fitting. The audiologist selects a suitable hearing aid for the customer within the budget limit according to the audiometric report. Then, the audiologist operates a fitting software provided by the manufacturer of the hearing aid to set parameters of the hearing aid. The audiologist may utilize several programs for the hearing aid to meet the customer's hearing requirements in different listening situations.
The third step is hearing-aid fine-tuning The customer expresses his/her feeling about the sounds and trouble encountered. The audiologist empirically fine-tunes parameters of the hearing aid to meet the customer's requirements and preferences.
The fourth step is trial use. The customer may take the hearing aid on trial for several weeks. If the hearing aid is not satisfying, the customer has to make an appointment with the audiologist to fine-tune the hearing aid again. The third step and the fourth step are repeated till the customer is satisfied with the hearing aid.
However, according to the above steps, it is known that the hearing aid fine-tuning step needs audiologist's experience cooperating with fitting software provided by the manufacturer of the hearing aid to fine-tune the hearing aid. That is to say, the customer has to carry the hearing aid back to the hearing-aid company again and again to perform the fine-tuning step if the adjustment is not satisfying. It is really costly and time-consuming. Someone may even return the hearing aid back or leave the hearing aid unused. In addition, the fitting software used for fine-tuning the hearing aid has a user interface incomprehensible to and difficult to be operated by unskilled persons. Please refer to FIG. 1 illustrating a user interface provided by a hearing aid fitting software usually used by a hearing aid company for fine-tuning the hearing aid. It is obvious that the user interface involves many complex parameters. For example, even the basic volume adjustment involves many frequency parameters and gain parameters to be adjusted to meet the user's requirement. Unfortunately, normal users have no idea how to perform the adjustment. If the customer installs the fitting software in his/her own computer equipped with a hearing-aid programmer to fine-tune the hearing aid by himself/herself, it is not easy for the customer to successfully adjust the hearing aid to satisfy his/her needs and preferences. Moreover, the hearing-aid programmer is not available for normal users. Hence, it is desired to overcome the above-mentioned problems.